NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory was launched in 1999. Since that time it has been used to study the Universe at wavelengths 0.12nm to 12nm that don’t get through the Earth’s atmosphere.

“Chandra’s Cosmos” introduces the types of objects and cosmic events that can be seen in X-rays such as supernova remnants, pulsar wind nebulae, very hot gas in galaxy clusters, quasars etc.

It is a beautiful and informative book and certainly talks about dark matter and black holes as is mentioned in the book’s subtitle. It is full of beautiful color images that combine data from Chandra and occasionally also data from Hubble Space Telescope or some other telescope.

I think Tucker really achieved what he was out to do with this book – show the coolest objects that have been observed with Chandra, but in a well-integrated way so that you don’t have a list of objects and images, that aren’t connected. Instead you have very detailed information on who was doing the research, why it’s interesting, what we still don’t know and it even mixes in a little bit of history of astronomy etc.

Although at first look it might seem as just a picture book or more of a coffee-table-book, it’s not, but it would function as a slightly more informative kind 🙂

There’re also several details that I really liked about my edition of the book (Smithsonian Books, 2017) is first the little silver Chandra telescope on the hardcover and secondly the fact that the paper isn’t glossy. I feel it’s important to have well illustrated books about science that could be given to children without having fingerprints all over the photos after just a short while.